The executioner, who wore a mask that he might not be known, began to adjust the hair of the prisoner by putting it up under his cap, when the king, supposing that he was going to strike, hastily told him to wait for the sign. The executioner said that he would. The king spent a few minutes in prayer, and then stretched out his hands, which was the sign which he had arranged to give. The axe descended. The dissevered head, with the blood streaming from it, was held up by the assistant executioner, for the gratification of the vast crowd which was gazing on the scene. He said, as he raised it, "Behold the head of a traitor!" [Sidenote: The body taken to Windsor Castle.] The body was placed in a coffin covered with black velvet, and taken back through the window into the room from which the monarch had walked out, in life and health, but a few moments before. A day or two afterward it was taken to Windsor Castle upon a hearse drawn by six horses, and covered with black velvet. It was there interred in a vault in the chapel, with an inscription upon lead over the coffin: KING CHARLES. 1648. [Sidenote: The Commonwealth.] [Sidenote: Government in the United States.] [Sidenote: Ownership.] After the death of Charles, a sort of republic was established in England, called the Commonwealth, over which, instead of a king, Oliver Cromwell presided, under the title of Protector. The country was, however, in a very anomalous and unsettled state. It became more distracted still after the death of the Protector, and it was only twelve years after beheading the father that the people of England, by common consent, called back the son to the throne. It seems as if there could be no stable government in a country where any very large portion of the inhabitants are destitute of property, without the aid of that mysterious but all-controlling principle of the human breast, a spirit of reverence for the rights, and dread of the power of an hereditary crown. In the United States almost every man is the possessor of property. He has his house, his little farm, his shop and implements of labor, or something which is his own, and which he feels would be jeopardized by revolution and anarchy. He dreads a general scramble, knowing that he would probably get less than he would lose by it. He is willing, therefore, to be governed by abstract law. There is no need of holding up before him a scepter or a crown to induce obedience. He submits without them. He votes with the rest, and then abides by the decision of the ballot-box. In other countries, however, the case is different. If not an actual majority, there is at least a very large proportion of the community who possess nothing. They get scanty daily food for hard and long-continued daily labor; and as change, no matter what, is always a blessing to sufferers, or at least is always looked forward to as such, they are ready to welcome, at all times, any thing that promises commotion. A war, a conflagration, a